Wednesday, November 18, 2015

of her recent book INVENT(ST)ORY (Dos Madres Press, 2015) is by Joey Madia at New Mystics Reviews. You can see entire reviewHEREbut here's an excerpt:

...works from Tabios’s early years, beginning with 1996, where, in the very first poem, I read the line “your finger trailing the ragged seam of my stretchmark.” Having read Tabios’s more political work, stemming from issues of Filipino nationalism and diaspora, the condition of the orphan, and gender transformation, among other elevated topics, I found this line a reminder that all art, no matter its purpose, must be personal and evocative. It must paint with words—words chosen with the utmost care and discernment.

An early experimentation of Tabios’s that defines her relationship to the reader that I found fascinating is from 2003, when she published There, Where the Pages Would End, which is a series of “footnote poems.” The idea was to have one of the poems at the bottom of an otherwise blank page so that the reader could create the story that would generate the footnote. I encourage the reader to do so. For writing teachers, or writers looking for exercises to sharpen their skills, this is powerful practice. In general, there is a considerable portion of Invent[st]ory that could be used to structure a series of workshops or to engage a class of writers with the endless possibilities for our craft that are left beyond the margins when we teach a static poem on the page and ask them to merely imitate.

For the one poem Joey Madia said he would recommend to a newcomer to Eileen's poetry, he recommended "What Can A Daughter Say?"--a poem that features prominently in two of Eileen's Marsh Hawk Press books, 2007's THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES (which is the poem's first publication) and 2010's THE THORN ROSARY. Available HEREis Part I of the six-part poem and John Bloomberg-Rissman's engagement with the poem.)

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Marsh Hawk is pleased to share that Smith College has acquired Mary Mackey's literary papers. Smith is taking copies of all of her first editions including her Marsh Hawk Press books, as well as manuscripts, rough drafts of poems and novels, fliers for her past readings, copies of all the publications that contain her work, and a lot of other things including her literary correspondence. The latter also means that if anyone has ever published one of her poems or written her a letter or an email that does not contain intimate personal information, that work will be housed with the Mary Mackey Papers at Smith.Mary Mackey's books with Marsh Hawk Press are

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Congratulations to Paul Pines! His book Message from the Memoirist is one of the books highlighted in "Editors Select" by the Summer/Fall Notre Dame Review. You can see the mention HERE but here's an excerpt:

Paul Pines’s new volume of poetry is also illustrated—in this case by Mark Shaker. The poems and illustrations make up a lively dialogue throughout. Like Lera Auerbach, Pines is also something of a polymath, and his poems manifest a deep interest in fields ranging from cosmology to jazz, the movies, and baseball. He also draws on his experience as a psychotherapist. Like one of his heroes, the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Pines’ basic sense of well-being is derived from a memory that remembers itself.

You have to admire the fluidity in the way Tabios writes. In another poem entitled Jade, she writes, "No need to turn the urn/to realize I no longer believe/ in the humility of monks." This is fitting. She is out there, where Hemingway spoke of, Sun Stigmata is like applying perfume to the pulse on your wrist and neck. The constant vibration of these words will radiate,and burst from the palms of your hands. This is a volume that is necessary. The sun gives life and so does good writing.